Journo’s Gay Punchline Garners Bad Press

A smalltime journalist got a big time walloping over at CBS News, where lawyer Andrew Cohen takes on Mort Marks of Colorado’s The Villager. A reported Republican, Marks recently used the world “homo” as a punchline. Cohen wasn’t laughing:

[I] called Marks himself to ask why he would have included that particular joke in a newspaper. He immediately got nasty with me. “I didn’t insult anyone,” he told me, and I have “nothing to apologize for.” He reminded me that the word “homosexual” is in the dictionary and that he saw nothing wrong with shortening it (for space reasons, he told me), to “homo.” He told me to grow up. He told me to lighten up. He laughed at me when I suggested that the word “homo” had long ago taken on a connotation that went way beyond its status as a mere contraction of the word homosexual. We hung up.

Let the record reflect that you may find in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, Page 866 the following definition: Homo: offensive.

Way to hit the Marks, Cohen!